(g) Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and
ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality
seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be
called the individual life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for
the sake of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poor
Queequeg's hand off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his
murderous jaw.

"Queequeg no care what god made him shark;' said the
savage, agonizingly lifting his hand up and down; "wedder Fejee god
or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin."

CHAPTER 67

Cutting In

CHAPTER 68

The Blanket

I have had controversies about it with experienced whalemen afloat,
and learned naturalists ashore. My original opinion remains unchanged;
but it is only an opinion.

I have several such dried bits, which I use for marks in my
whale-books. It is transparent, as I said before; and being laid upon
the printed page, I have

sometimes pleased myself with fancying it exerted a magnifying
influence. At any rate, it is pleasant to read about whales through
their own spectacles, as you may say. But But no more of this.

In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is Almost
invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and re-crossed with
numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those in the
finest Italian line engravings. But these marks do not seem to be
impressed upon the isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be
seen through it, as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is
this all. In some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear
marks, as in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other
delineations. These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those
mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is
the proper word to use in the present connexion. By my retentive memory
of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much
struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on
the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi.
Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains
undecipherable. This allusion to the Indian rocks reminds me of another
thing. Besides all the other phenomena which the exterior of the Sperm
Whale presents, he not seldom displays the back, and more especially his
flanks, effaced in great part of the regular linear appearance, by
reason of numerous rude scratches, altogether of an irregular, random
aspect. I should say that those New England rocks on the sea-coast,
which Agassiz imagines to bear the marks of violent scraping contact
with vast floating icebergs--I should say, that those rocks must not a
little resemble the Sperm Whale in this particular. It also seems to me
that such scratches in the whale are probably made by hostile contact
with other whales; for I have most remarked them in the large,
full-grown bulls of the species.

A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of
the whale. It has already been said, that it is stript from him in long
pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one is very
happy and significant.

For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a real
blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho slipt over
his head, and skirting his extremity. It is by reason of this cosy
blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself
comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides. What would
become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of the
North, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? True, other fish are found
exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but these, be it
observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies are
refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of an
iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire;
whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his blood,
and he dies. How wonderful is it then--except after explanation--that
this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it
is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed to
his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall
overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, perpendicularly
frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found glued in
amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved by
experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a
Borneo negro in summer.

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong
individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare
virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after
the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in
this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood
fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the
great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.

But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things! Of
erections, how few are domed like St. Peter's! of creatures, how
few vast as the whale!

CHAPTER 69

The Funeral

,

The sea-vultures all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all
punctiliously in black or speckled. In life but few of them would have
helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure he had needed it; but upon the
banquet of his funeral they most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible
vultureism of earth! from which not the mightiest whale is free.

Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost
survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war or
blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the
swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in the
sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the
whale's unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the
log--shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts: beware! And for years
afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly
sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there
when a stick was held. There's your law of precedents; there's
your utility of traditions; there's the story of your obstinate
survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even
hovering in the air! There's orthodoxy!

Thus, while in life the great whale's body may have been a
real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless
panic to a world.

Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts
than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who
believe in them.

CHAPTER 70

The Sphynx

, even by the immense tackles of a whaler, this

"which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there
lookest hoary with mosses; Thou hast been where bell or diver never
went; hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless mothers
would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked
lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank
beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false
to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from
the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the
insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed--while swift
lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a
righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms."

"Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her
breeze to us!"

"Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along
that way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O
soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not
the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning
duplicate in mind."

CHAPTER 71

The Jeroboam's Story

Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster
than the ship, and soon the Pequod began to rock.

By and by, through the glass the stranger's boats and manned
mast-heads proved her a whale-ship. But as she was so far to windward,
and shooting by, apparently making a passage to some other ground, the
Pequod could not hope to reach her. So the signal was set to see what
response would be made.

Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the
ships of the American Whale Fleet have each a private signal; all which
signals being collected in a book with the names of the respective
vessels attached, every captain is provided with it. Thereby, the whale
commanders are enabled to recognize each other upon the ocean, even at
considerable distances and with no small facility.

The Pequod's signal was at last responded to by the
stranger's setting her own; which proved the ship to be the
Jeroboam of Nantucket. Squaring her yards, she bore down, ranged abeam
under the Pequod's lee, and lowered a boat; it soon drew nigh; but,
as the side-ladder was being rigged by Starbuck's order to
accommodate the visiting captain, the stranger in question waved his
hand from his boat's stern in token of that proceeding being
entirely unnecessary. It turned out that the Jeroboam had a malignant
epidemic on board, and that Mayhew, her captain, was fearful of
infecting the Pequod's company. For, though himself and boat's
crew remained untainted, and though his ship was half a rifle-shot off,
and an incorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing between; yet
conscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine of the land, he
peremptorily refused to come into direct contact with the Pequod.

But this did by no means prevent all communications. Preserving an
interval of some few yards between itself and the ship, the
Jeroboam's boat by the occasional use of its oars contrived to keep
parallel to the Pequod, as she heavily forged through the sea (for by
this time it blew very fresh), with her main- topsail aback; though,
indeed, at times by the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, the boat
would be pushed some way ahead; but would be soon skilfully brought to
her proper bearings again. Subject to this, and other the like
interruptions now and then, a conversation was sustained between the two
parties; but at intervals not without still another interruption of a
very different sort.

Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam's boat, was a man of a singular
appearance, even in that wild whaling life where individual notabilities
make up all totalities. He was a small, short, youngish man, sprinkled
all over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant yellow hair. A
long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut tinge enveloped
him; the overlapping sleeves of which were rolled up on his wrists. A
deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in his eyes.

So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had
exclaimed--"That's he! that's he!--the long-togged
scaramouch the Town-Ho's company told us off" Stubb here
alluded to a strange story told of the Jeroboam, and a certain man among
her crew, some time previous when the Pequod spoke the Town-Ho.
According to this account and what was subsequently learned, it seemed
that the scaramouch in question had gained a wonderful ascendency over
almost everybody in the Jeroboam. His story was this:

He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of
Neskyeuna Shakers, where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked,
secret meetings having several times descended from heaven by the way of
a trap-door, announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial, which he
carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of containing gunpowder,
was supposed to be charged with laudanum. A strange, apostolic whim
having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for Nantucket, where, with that
cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a steady, common-sense
exterior, and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the
Jeroboam's whaling voyage. They engaged him; but straightway upon
the ship's getting out of sight of land, his insanity broke out in
a freshet. He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded
the captain to jump overboard. He published his manifesto, whereby he
set himself forth as the deliverer of the isles of the sea and vicar-
general of all Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness with which he
declared these things;--the dark, daring play of his sleepless, excited
imagination, and all the preternatural terrors of real delirium, united
to invest this Gabriel in the minds of the majority of the ignorant
crew, with an atmosphere of sacredness. Moreover, they were afraid of
him. As such a man, however, was not of much practical use in the ship,
especially as he refused to work except when he pleased, the incredulous
captain would fain have been rid of him; but apprised that that
individual's intention was to land him in the first convenient
port, the archangel forthwith opened all his seals and vials--devoting
the ship and all hands to unconditional perdition, in case this
intention was carried out. So strongly did he work upon his disciples
among the crew, that at last in a body they went to the captain and told
him if Gabriel was sent from the ship, not a man of them would remain.
He was therefore forced to relinquish his plan. Nor would they permit
Gabriel to be any way maltreated, say or do what he would; so that it
came to pass that Gabriel had the complete freedom of the ship. The
consequence of all this was, that the archangel cared little or nothing
for the captain and mates; and since the epidemic had broken out, he
carried a higher hand than ever; declaring that the plague, as he called
it, was at his sole command; nor should it be stayed but according to
his good pleasure. The sailors, mostly poor devils, cringed, and some of
them fawned before him; in obedience to his instructions, sometimes
rendering him personal homage, as to a god. Such things may seem
incredible; but, however wondrous, they are true. Nor is the history of
fanatics half so striking in respect to the measureless self-deception
of the fanatic himself, as his measureless power of deceiving and
bedevilling so many others. But it is time to return to the Pequod.

"I fear not thy epidemic, man," said Ahab from the
bulwarks, to Captain Mayhew, who stood in the boat's stern;
"come on board."

But now Gabriel started to his feet.

"Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious! Beware of the
horrible plague!"

"Gabriel! Gabriel!" cried Captain Mayhew; "thou must
either--" But that instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead,
and its seethings drowned all speech.

"Hast thou seen the White Whale?" demanded Ahab, when the
boat drifted back.

"Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk! Beware of
the horrible tail!"

"I tell thee again, Gabriel, that--" But again the boat
tore ahead as if dragged by fiends. Nothing was said for some moments,
while a succession of riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those
occasional caprices of the seas were tumbling, not heaving it. Meantime,
the hoisted sperm whale's head jogged about very violently, and
Gabriel was seen eyeing it with rather more apprehensiveness than his
archangel nature seemed to warrant.

When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story
concerning Moby Dick; not, however, without frequent interruptions from
Gabriel, whenever his name was mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed
leagued with him.

It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon
speaking a whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the
existence of Moby Dick, and the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking in
this intelligence, Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against attacking
the White Whale, in case the monster should be seen; in his gibbering
insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being than the
Shaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when, some
year or two afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the
mast-heads, Macey, the chief mate, burned with ardor to encounter him;
and the captain himself being not unwilling to let him have the
opportunity, despite all the archangel's denunciations and
forewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading five men to man his boat.
With them he pushed off; and, after much weary pulling, and many
perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last succeeded in getting one iron
fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-head, was
tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth prophecies of
speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity. Now, while
Macey, the mate, was standing up in his boat's bow, and with all
the reckless energy of his tribe was venting his wild exclamations upon
the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance for his poised lance, lo! a
broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its quick, fanning motion,
temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the oarsmen. Next
instant, the luckless mate, so full of furious life, was smitten bodily
into the air, and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea at
the distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was harmed,
nor a hair of any oarsman's head; but the mate for ever sank.

It is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents in the
Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any.
Sometimes, nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated;
oftener the boat's bow is knocked off, or the thigh-board, in which
the headsman stands, is torn from its place and accompanies the body.
But strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instances than
one, when the body has been recovered, not a single mark of violence is
discernible; the man being stark dead.

The whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was plainly
descried from the ship. Raising a piercing shriek--"The vial! the
vial!" Gabriel called off the terror-stricken crew from the further
hunting of the whale. This terrible event clothed the archangel with
added influence; because his credulous disciples believed that he had
specifically fore-announced it, instead of only making a general
prophecy, which any one might have done, and so have chanced to hit one
of many marks in the wide margin allowed. He became a nameless terror to
the ship.

Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab put such questions to
him, that the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring whether he
intended to hunt the White Whale, if opportunity should offer. To which
Ahab answered-- "Aye" Straightway, then, Gabriel once more
started to his feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehemently exclaimed,
with downward pointed finger--"Think, think of the
blasphemer--dead, and down there!--beware of the blasphemer's
end!"

Ahab stolidly turned aside; then said to Mayhew, "Captain, I
have just bethought me of my letter-bag; there is a letter for one of
thy officers, if I mistake not. Starbuck, look over the bag."

Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various
ships, whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed,
depends upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans.
Thus, most letters never reach their mark; and many are only received
after attaining an age of two or three years or more.

Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It was sorely
tumbled, damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in
consequence of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a
letter, Death himself might well have been the post-boy.

"Can'st not read it?" cried Ahab. "Give it me,
man. Aye, aye, it's but a dim scrawl;--what's this?" As
he was studying it out, Starbuck took a long cutting- spade pole, and
with his knife slightly split the end, to insert the letter there, and
in that way, hand it to the boat, without its coming any closer to the
ship.

"Curses throttle thee!" yelled Ahab. "Captain
Mayhew, stand by now to receive it;" and taking the fatal missive
from Starbuck's hands, he caught it in the slit of the pole, and
reached it over towards the boat. But as he did so, the oarsmen
expectantly desisted from rowing; the boat drifted a little towards the
ship's stern; so that, as if by magic, the letter suddenly ranged
along with Gabriel's eager hand. He clutched it in an instant,
seized the boat-knife, and impaling the letter on it, sent it thus
loaded back into the ship. It fell at Ahab's feet. Then Gabriel
shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their oars, and in that
manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the Pequod.

As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the
jacket of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to
this wild affair.

CHAPTER 72

The Monkey-rope

Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence;
for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an injustice. And
yet still further pondering--while--still further pondering, I say, I
saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every
mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has
this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker
breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your
pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may
possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life
(h)

"Ginger? Do I smell ginger?" suspiciously asked Stubb,
coming near. "Yes, this must be ginger" peering into the as
yet untasted cup. Then standing as if incredulous for a while, he calmly
walked towards the astonished steward slowly saying, "Ginger?
ginger? and will you have the goodness to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, where
lies the virtue of ginger? Ginger! is ginger the sort of fuel you use,
Dough-boy, to kindle a fire in this shivering cannibal? Ginger!--what
the devil is ginger?--sea-coal? firewood?--lucifer matches?--tinder?--
gunpowder?--what the devil is ginger, I say, that you offer this cup to
our poor Queequeg here."

"There is some sneaking Temperance Society movement about this
business" he suddenly added, now approaching Starbuck, who had just
come from forward. "Will you look at that kannakin, sir; smell of
it, if you please." Then watching the mate's countenance, he
added, "The steward, Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer that
calomel and jalap to Queequeg, there, this instant off the whale. Is the
steward an apothecary, sir? and may I ask whether this is the sort of
bitters by which he blows back the life into a half-drowned man?"

"I trust not," said Starbuck, "it is poor stuff
enough."

"Aye, aye, steward," cried Stubb, "we'll teach
you to drug it harpooneer; none of your apothecary's medicine here;
you want to poison us, do ye? You have got out insurances on our lives
and want to murder us all, and pocket the proceeds, do ye?"

"It was not me," cried Dough-Boy, "it was Aunt
Charity that brought the ginger on board; and bade me never give the
harpooneers any spirits, but only this ginger-jub--so she called
it."

"Ginger-jub! you gingerly rascal! take that! and run along
with ye to the lockers, and get something better. I hope I do no wrong,
Mr. Starbuck. It is the captain's orders--grog for the harpooneer
on a whale."

"Enough," replied Starbuck, "only don't hit him
again, but--"

"Oh, I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale or
something of that sort; and this fellow's a weazel. What were you
about saying, sir?"

"Only this: go down with him, and get what thou wantest
thyself."

When Stubb reappeared, he came with in one hand, and a sort of
tea-caddy in the other. The first contained, and was handed to Queequeg;
the second was Aunt Charity's gift, and that was freely given to
the waves.

CHAPTER 73

Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk over Him

,

"at last. I don't half like that chap, Stubb."

"the toes of"

"Pooh!"

"Why, they say as how he went a sauntering into the old
flag-ship once, switching his tail about devilish easy and
gentlemanlike, and inquiring if the old governor was at home. Well, he
was at home, and asked the devil what he wanted. The devil, switching
his hoofs, up and says, 'I want John.' 'What for?'
says the old governor. 'What business is that of yours, says the
devil, getting mad,--'I want to use him.' 'Take
him,' says the governor--and by the Lord, Flask, if the devil
didn't give John the Asiatic cholera before he got through with
him, I'll eat this whale in one mouthful."

"I think I remember some story as," "but I
can't remember where."

"Three Spaniards? Adventures of those three bloody-minded
soldadoes? Did ye read it there, Flask? I guess ye did?"

"No: never saw such a book; heard of it, though. But now, tell
me, Stubb, do you suppose that that devil you was speaking of just now,
was the same you say is now on board the Pequod?"

"Am I the same man that helped kill this whale? Doesn't
the devil live for ever; who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you
ever see any parson a wearing mourning for the devil? And if the devil
has a latch-key to get into the admiral's cabin, don't you
suppose he can crawl into a porthole? Tell me that, Mr. Flask?"

"How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb?"

"Do you see that mainmast there?" pointing to the ship;
"well, that's the figure one; now take all the hoops in the
Pequod's hold, and string along in a row with that mast, for
oughts, do you see; well, that wouldn't begin to be Fedallah's
age. Nor all the coopers in creation couldn't show hoops enough to
make oughts enough."

"But see here, Stubb, I thought you a little boasted just now,
he's so old as all those hoops of yours come to, and if"

"in the admiral's cabin let alone down in the orlop
there, where he lives, and on the upper decks"

passing

CHAPTER 74

The Sperm Whale's Head--Contrasted View

:

A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning
this visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content with
a hint. So long as a man's eyes are open in the light, the act of
seeing is involuntary; that is, he cannot then help mechanically seeing
whatever objects are before him. Nevertheless, any one's experience
will teach him, that though he can take in an undiscriminating sweep of
things at one glance, it is quite impossible for him, attentively, and
completely, to examine any two things--however large or however
small--at one and the same instant of time; never mind if they lie side
by side and touch each other. But if you now come to separate these two
objects, and surround each by a circle of profound darkness; then, in
order to see one of them, in such a manner as to bring your mind to bear
on it, the other will be utterly excluded from your contemporary
consciousness. How is it, then, with the whale? True, both his eyes, in
themselves, must simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more
comprehensive, combining, and subtle than man's, that he can at the
same moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on
one side of him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction? If he
can, then is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able
simultaneously to go through the demonstrations of two distinct problems
in Euclid. Nor, strictly investigated, is there any incongruity in this
comparison.

It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that
the extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when
beset by three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer
frights, so common to such whales; I think that all this indirectly
proceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition, in which their
divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve them.

--

,

CHAPTER 75

The Right Whale's Head--Contrasted View

(especially in front, where it is so broadly rounded)

Probably the mother during an important interval was sailing down
the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes caused the beach to gape. those
which have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned Though the certainty of
this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of
analogical probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a
far greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem
reasonable.

(i)

To sum up, then: in the Right Whale's there is no great well
of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible of a lower
jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor in the Sperm Whale are there any
of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely anything of a
tongue. Again, the Right Whale has two external spout-holes, the Sperm
Whale only one.

CHAPTER 76

The Battering-Ram

, much in the same way, indeed, as though your own mouth were
entirely under your chin ,

For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and
sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for salamander giants only to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials
then? What befell the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess's
veil at Lais?

CHAPTER 77

The Great Heidelburgh Tun

(j)

Sperm Whale's

CHAPTER 78

Cistern and Buckets

, from his now quiet, swinging perch overhead

--

, too,

I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header's will be
sure to seem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may
have either seen or heard of some one's falling into a cistern
ashore; an accident which not seldom happens, and with much less reason
too than the Indian's, considering the exceeding slipperiness of
the curb of the Sperm Whale's well.

But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We
thought the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the
lightest and most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink in
an element of a far greater specific gravity than itself. We have thee
there. Not at all, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell in, the
case had been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving little but
the dense tendinous wall of the well--a double welded, hammered
substance, as I have before said, much heavier than the sea water, and a
lump of which sinks in it like lead almost. But the tendency to rapid
sinking in this substance was in the present instance materially
counteracted by the other parts of the head remaining undetached from
it, so that it sank very slowly and deliberately indeed, affording
Queequeg a fair chance for performing his agile obstetrics on the run,
as you may say. Yes, it was a running delivery, so it was.

Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very
precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of
fragrant spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner
chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can
readily be recalled--the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who
seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store
of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died
embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's
honey head, and sweetly perished there?

CHAPTER 79

The Prairie

And since the nose is the central and most conspicuous of the
features; and since it perhaps most modifies and finally controls their
combined expression; hence it would seem that its entire absence, as an
external appendage, must very largely affect the countenance of the
whale. For as in landscape gardening, a spire, cupola, monument, or
tower of some sort, is deemed almost indispensable to the completion of
the scene; so no face can be physiognomically in keeping without the
elevated open-work belfry of the nose. Dash the nose from Phidias's
marble Jove, and what a sorry remainder! same which in the sculptured
Jove were hideous, in him A nose to the whale would have been
impertinent. in your jolly-boat

Few are the foreheads which like Shakespeare's or
Melancthon's rise so high, and descend so low, that the eyes
themselves seem clear, eternal, tideless mountain lakes; and all above
them in the forehead's wrinkles, you seem to track the antlered
thoughts descending there to drink, as the Highland hunters track the
snow prints of the deer.

And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been known to
the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their child-magian
thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile
is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or at least it is so
exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any
highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birth-right,
the merry May-day gods of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the
now egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to
Jove's high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it.

CHAPTER 80

The Nut

So like a choice casket is it secreted in him, that I have known
some whalemen who peremptorily deny that the Sperm Whale has any other
brain than that palpable semblance of one formed by the cubic-yards of
his sperm magazine. Lying in strange folds, courses, and convolutions,
to their apprehensions, it seems more in keeping with the idea of his
general might to regard that mystic part of him as the seat of his
intelligence.

It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this Leviathan,
in the creature's living intact state, is an entire delusion. As
for his true brain, you can then see no indications of it, nor feel any.
The whale, like all things that are mighty, wears a false brow to the
common world.

If you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear
view of its rear end, which is the high end, you will be struck by its
resemblance to the human skull, beheld in the same situation, and from
the same point of view. Indeed, place this reversed skull (scaled down
to the human magnitude) among a plate of men's skulls, and you
would involuntarily confound it with them; and remarking the depressions
on one part of its summit, in phrenological phrase you would say--This
man had no self-esteem, and no veneration. And by those negations,
considered along with the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and
power, you can best form to yourself the truest, though not the most
exhilarating conception of what the most exalted potency is.

But if from the comparative dimensions of the whale's proper
brain, you deem it incapable of being adequately charted, then I have
another idea for you. If you attentively regard almost any
quadruped's spine, you will be struck with the resemblance of its
vertebrae to a strung necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the skull proper. It is a German conceit, that the
vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped skulls. But the curious external
resemblance, I take it the Germans were not the first men to perceive. A
foreign friend once pointed it out to me, in the skeleton of a foe he
had slain, and with the vertebrae of which he was inlaying, in a sort of
basso-relievo, the beaked prow of his canoe. Now, I consider that the
phrenologists have omitted an important thing in not pushing their
investigations from the cerebellum through the spinal canal. For I
believe that much of a man's character will be found betokened in
his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever
you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul.
I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm audacious staff of that flag which
I fling half out to the world.

Apply this spinal branch of phrenology to the Sperm Whale. His
cranial cavity is continuous with the first neck-vertebra; and in that
vertebra the bottom of the spinal canal will measure ten inches across,
being eight in height, and of a triangular figure with the base
downwards. As it passes through the remaining vertebrae the canal tapers
in size, but for a considerable distance remains of large capacity. Now,
of course, this canal is filled with much the same strangely fibrous
substance--the spinal cord--as the brain; and directly communicates with
the brain. And what is still more, for many feet after emerging from the
brain's cavity, the spinal cord remains of an undecreasing girth,
almost equal to that of the brain. Under all these circumstances, would
it be unreasonable to survey and map out the whale's spine
phrenologically? For, viewed in this light, the wonderful comparative
smallness of his brain proper is more than compensated by the wonderful
comparative magnitude of his spinal cord.

But leaving this hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists,
I would merely assume the spinal theory for a moment, in reference to
the Sperm Whale's hump. This august hump, if I mistake not, rises
over one of the larger vertebrae, and is, therefore, in some sort, the
outer convex mould of it. From its relative situation then, I should
call this high hump the organ of firmness or indomitableness in the
Sperm Whale. And that the great monster is indomitable, you will yet
have reason to know.

CHAPTER 81

The Pequod meets the Virgin

at very wide intervals of latitude and longitude,

profound

, , rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans of horses in
harness.

, humped by his comparatively slow progress, as well as in advance,
, because the white-bone or swell at his broad muzzle was a dashed one,
like the swell formed when two hostile currents meet.

cumbrous

, and the other whales were going with such great velocity,
moreover, as almost to defy pursuit for the time from the great start he
had had, completely and pass

;

So have I seen a bird with clipped wing making affrighted broken
circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks. But
the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make known her fear;
but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained up and
enchanted in him; he had no voice, save that choking respiration through
his spiracle, and

"This puts me in mind of fastening to an elephant in a tilbury on a plain--makes the wheel-spokes fly, boys, when you fasten to him
that way; and there's danger of being pitched out too, when you
strike a hill. Hurrah! this whale carries the everlasting mail!"

We all know what an astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves
stand up under; even here, above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the
burden of a whale, bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms
of ocean! It must at least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres.

like the big weight to an eight day clock Is this the creature of
whom it was once so triumphantly said--"Canst thou fill his skin
with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears? The sword of him that
layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon: he
esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are
counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a spear!" This
the creature? this he? Oh! that unfulfilments should follow the
prophets. For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his tail,
Leviathan had run his head under the mountains of the sea, to hide him
from the Pequod's fish-spears!

In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three
boats sent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and
broad enough to shade half Xerxes' army. Who can tell how appalling
to the wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his
head!

, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by magnetic wires, the
life and death throbs of the whale, so that every oarsman felt them in
his seat relieved in great part from the downward strain at the bows,

His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion, at least and
bleeding ; even as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in
the well-springs of far-off and undiscernible hills. , however rapid,

As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the noblest
oaks when prostrate, so

glorying showers of , by this time, It was most piteous, that last
expiring spout. As when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off
from some mighty fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings
the spray- column lowers and lowers to the ground--so the last long
dying spout of the whale.

very

Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to
this accident than any other species. Where one of that sort go down,
twenty Right Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt
imputable in no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the
Right Whale; his Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a
ton; from this incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But there are
instances where, after the lapse of many hours or several days, the
sunken whale again rises, more buoyant than in life. But the reason of
this is obvious. Gases are generated in him; he swells to a prodigious
magnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon. A line-of-battle ship could
hardly keep him under then. In the Shore Whaling, on soundings, among
the Bays of New Zealand, when a Right Whale gives token of sinking, they
fasten buoys to him, with plenty of rope; so that when the body has gone
down, they know where to look for it when it shall have ascended again.

Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.

CHAPTER 82

The Honor and Glory of Whaling

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the
true method.

The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches
up to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with
its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so
many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or
other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the
reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so
emblazoned a fraternity.

The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and
to the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale
attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those
were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to
succor the distressed, and not to fill men's lamp-feeders. Every
one knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely
Andromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the sea-coast,
and as Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the
prince of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and
delivered and married the maid. It was an admirable artistic exploit,
rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day; inasmuch as
this Leviathan was slain at the very first dart. And let no man doubt
this Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian
coast, in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast
skeleton of a whale, which the city's legends and all the
inhabitants asserted to be the identical bones of the monster that
Perseus slew. When the Romans took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried
to Italy in triumph. What seems most singular and suggestively important
in this story, is this: it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.

Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda--indeed, by some
supposed to be indirectly derived from it--is that famous story of St.
George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for
in many old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled
together, and often stand for each other. "Thou art as a lion of
the waters, and as a dragon of the sea," saith Ezekiel; hereby,
plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible use that
word itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the
exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land,
instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man may
kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart
in them to march boldly up to a whale.

Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; for though
the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely
represented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is depicted
on land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance
of those times, when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists;
and considering that as in Perseus' case, St. George's whale
might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach; and considering that
the animal ridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or
sea-horse; bearing all this in mind, it will not appear altogether
incompatible with the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the
scene, to hold this so-called dragon no other than the great Leviathan
himself. In fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth, this
whole story will fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the
Philistines, Dagon by name; who being planted before the ark of Israel,
his horse's head and both the palms of his hands fell off from him,
and only the stump or fishy part of him remained. Thus, then, one of our
own noble stamp, even a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England;
and by good rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in
the most noble order of St. George. And therefore, let not the knights
of that honorable company (none of whom, I venture to say, have ever had
to do with a whale like their great patron), let them never eye a
Nantucketer with disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred
trowsers we are much better entitled to St. George's decoration
than they.

Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long
remained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that
antique Crockett and Kit Carson--that brawny doer of rejoicing good
deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether that
strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted. It nowhere
appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, unless, indeed, from
the inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of involuntary
whaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did not the whale. I
claim him for one of our clan.

But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of
Hercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more
ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versa; certainly
they are very similar. If I claim the demigod then, why not the prophet?

Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the
whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like
royal kings of old times, we find the head waters of our fraternity in
nothing short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental story
is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread
Vishnoo, one of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives
us this divine Vishnoo himself for our Lord;--Vishnoo, who, by the first
of his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved
to recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave
birth to Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical
books, whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo
before beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained
something in the shape of practical hints to young architects, these
Vedas were lying at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became
incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths,
rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even
as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?

Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a
member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like
that?

CHAPTER 83

Jonah Historically Regarded

Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale
in the preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this
historical story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some
sceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans
of their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale, and
Arion and the dolphin; and yet their doubting those traditions did not
make those traditions one whit the less facts, for all that.

One old Sag-Harbor whaleman's chief reason for questioning the
Hebrew story was this:--He had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles,
embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which represented
Jonah's whale with two spouts in his head--a peculiarity only true
with respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, and the
varieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen have this
saying, "A penny roll would choke him;" his swallow is so very
small. But, to this, Bishop Jebb's anticipative answer is ready. It
is not necessary, hints the Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in
the whale's belly, but as temporarily lodged in some part of his
mouth. And this seems reasonable enough in the good Bishop. For truly,
the Right Whale's mouth would accommodate a couple of whist-tables,
and comfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too, Jonah might have
ensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts, the Right
Whale is toothless.

Another reason which Sag-Harbor (he went by that name) urged for
his want of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something obscurely
in reference to his incarcerated body and the whale's gastric
juices. But this objection likewise falls to the ground, because a
German exegetist supposes that Jonah must have taken refuge in the
floating body of a dead whale--even as the French soldiers in the
Russian campaign turned their dead horses into tents, and crawled into
them. Besides, it has been divined by other continental commentators,
that when Jonah was thrown overboard from the Joppa ship, he straightway
effected his escape to another vessel near by, some vessel with a whale
for a figure-head; and, I would add, possibly called "The
Whale," as some craft are nowadays christened the
"Shark," the "Gull," the "Eagle." Nor have
there been wanting learned exegetists who have opined that the whale
mentioned in the book of Jonah merely meant a life-preserver--an
inflated bag of wind--which the endangered prophet swam to, and so was
saved from a watery doom. Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all
round. But he had still another reason for his want of faith. It was
this, if I remember right: Jonah was swallowed by the whale in the
Mediterranean Sea, and after three days he was vomited up somewhere
within three days' journey of Nineveh, a city on the Tigris, very
much more than three days' journey across from the nearest point of
the Mediterranean coast. How is that?

But was there no other way for the whale to land the prophet within
that short distance of Nineveh? Yes. He might have carried him round by
the way of the Cape of Good Hope. But not to speak of the passage
through the whole length of the Mediterranean, and another passage up
the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, such a supposition would involve the
complete circumnavigation of all Africa in three days, not to speak of
the Tigris waters, near the site of Nineveh, being too shallow for any
whale to swim in. Besides, this idea of Jonah's weathering the Cape
of Good Hope at so early a day would wrest the honor of the discovery of
that great headland from Bartholomew Diaz, its reputed discoverer, and
so make modern history a liar.

But all these foolish arguments of old Sag-Harbor only evinced his
foolish pride of reason--a thing still more reprehensible in him, seeing
that he had but little learning except what he had picked up from the
sun and the sea. I say it only shows his foolish, impious pride, and
abominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy. For by a
Portuguese Catholic priest, this very idea of Jonah's going to
Nineveh via the Cape of Good Hope was advanced as a signal magnification
of the general miracle. And so it was. Besides, to this day, the highly
enlightened Turks devoutly believe in the historical story of Jonah. And
some three centuries ago, an English traveller in old Harris's
Voyages, speaks of a Turkish Mosque built in honor of Jonah, in which
Mosque was a miraculous lamp that burnt without any oil.

CHAPTER 84

Pitchpoling

not long after the German ship Jungfrau disappeared,

with swift precipitancy

of considerable length,

, which in effect become serious drawbacks

He minds you somewhat of a juggler, balancing a long staff on his
chin. with a rapid, nameless impulse

CHAPTER 85

The Fountain

That for six thousand years--and no one knows how many millions of
ages before--the great whales should have been spouting all over the
sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so
many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back,
thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the
whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings--that all this should
be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter
minutes past one o'clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December,
A.D. 1850), it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings
are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapor--this is surely a
noteworthy thing.

Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting
items contingent. Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their
gills, the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all times is
combined with the element in which they swim; hence, a herring or a cod
might live a century, and never once raise its head above the surface.
But owing to his marked internal structure which gives him regular
lungs, like a human being's, the whale can only live by inhaling
the disengaged air in the open atmosphere. Wherefore the necessity for
his periodical visits to the upper world. But he cannot in any degree
breathe through his mouth, for, in his ordinary attitude, the Sperm
Whale's mouth is buried at least eight feet beneath the surface;
and what is still more, his windpipe has no connexion with his mouth.
No, he breathes through his spiracle alone; and this is on the top of
his head.

If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function
indispensable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a
certain element, which being subsequently brought into contact with the
blood imparts to the blood its vivifying principle, I do not think I
shall err; though I may possibly use some superfluous scientific words.
Assume it, and it follows that if all the blood in a man could be
aerated with one breath, he might then seal up his nostrils and not
fetch another for a considerable time. That is to say, he would then
live without breathing. Anomalous as it may seem, this is precisely the
case with the whale, who systematically lives, by intervals, his full
hour and more (when at the bottom) without drawing a single breath, or
so much as in any way inhaling a particle of air; for, remember, he has
no gills. How is this? Between his ribs and on each side of his spine he
is supplied with a remarkable involved Cretan labyrinth of
vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when he quits the surface, are
completely distended with oxygenated blood. So that for an hour or more,
a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries a surplus stock of vitality in
him, just as the camel crossing the waterless desert carries a surplus
supply of drink for future use in its four supplementary stomachs. The
anatomical fact of this labyrinth is indisputable; and that the
supposition founded upon it is reasonable and true, seems the more
cogent to me, when I consider the otherwise inexplicable obstinacy of
that leviathan in having his spoutings out, as the fishermen phrase it.
This is what I mean. If unmolested, upon rising to the surface, the
Sperm Whale will continue there for a period of time exactly uniform
with all his other unmolested risings. Say he stays eleven minutes, and
jets seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths; then whenever he
rises again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again, to
a minute. Now, if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm him, so that
he sounds, he will be always dodging up again to make good his regular
allowance of air. And not till those seventy breaths are told, will he
finally go down to stay out his full term below. Remark, however, that
in different individuals these rates are different; but in any one they
are alike. Now, why should the whale thus insist upon having his
spoutings out, unless it be to replenish his reservoir of air, ere
descending for good? How obvious is it, too, that this necessity for the
whale's rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase.
For not by hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught, when
sailing a thousand fathoms beneath the sunlight. Not so much thy skill,
then, O hunter, as the great necessities that strike the victory to
thee!

In man, breathing is incessantly going on--one breath only serving
for two or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he has to
attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he will. But the
Sperm Whale only breathes about one seventh or Sunday of his time.

It has been said that the whale only breathes through his
spout-hole; if it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed
with water, then I opine we should be furnished with the reason why his
sense of smell seems obliterated in him; for the only thing about him
that at all answers to his nose is that identical spout-hole; and being
so clogged with two elements, it could not be expected to have the power
of smelling. But owing to the mystery of the spout--whether it be water
or whether it be vapor--no absolute certainty can as yet be arrived at
on this head. Sure it is, nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no
proper olfactories. But what does he want of them? No roses, no violets,
no Cologne-water in the sea.

Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his
spouting canal, and as that long canal--like the grand Erie Canal--is
furnished with a sort of locks (that open and shut) for the downward
retention of air or the upward exclusion of water, therefore the whale
has no voice; unless you insult him by saying, that when he so strangely
rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale
to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say
to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting
a living. Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener!

Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it
is for the conveyance of air, and for several feet laid along,
horizontally, just beneath the upper surface of his head, and a little
to one side; this curious canal is very much like a gas-pipe laid down
in a city on one side of a street. But the question returns whether this
gas-pipe is also a water-pipe; in other words, whether the spout of the
Sperm Whale is the mere vapor of the exhaled breath, or whether that
exhaled breath is mixed with water taken in at the mouth, and discharged
through the spiracle. It is certain that the mouth indirectly
communicates with the spouting canal; but it cannot be proved that this
is for the purpose of discharging water through the spiracle. Because
the greatest necessity for so doing would seem to be, when in feeding he
accidentally takes in water. But the Sperm Whale's food is far
beneath the surface, and there he cannot spout even if he would.
Besides, if you regard him very closely, and time him with your watch,
you will find that when unmolested, there is an undeviating rhyme
between the periods of his jets and the ordinary periods of respiration.

But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject? Speak
out! You have seen him spout; then declare what the spout is; can you
not tell water from air? My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to
settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the
knottiest of all. And as for this whale spout, you might almost stand in
it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely.

The central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist
enveloping it; and how can you certainly tell whether any water falls
from it, when, always, when you are close enough to a whale to get a
close view of his spout, he is in a prodigious commotion, the water
cascading all around him. And if at such times you should think that you
really perceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do you know that
they are not merely condensed from its vapor; or how do you know that
they are not those identical drops superficially lodged in the
spout-hole fissure, which is countersunk into the summit of the
whale's head?

For even when tranquilly swimming through the mid-day sea in a
calm, with his elevated hump sun-dried as a dromedary's in the
desert; even then, the whale always carries a small basin of water on
his head, as under a blazing sun you will sometimes see a cavity in a
rock filled up with rain.

Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over curious touching
the precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do for him to be
peering into it, and putting his face in it. You cannot go with your
pitcher to this fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For even when
coming into slight contact with the outer, vapory shreds of the jet,
which will often happen, your skin will feverishly smart, from the
acridness of the thing so touching it. And I know one, who coming into
still closer contact with the spout, whether with some scientific object
in view, or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled off from his cheek
and arm. Wherefore, among whalemen, the spout is deemed poisonous; they
try to evade it. Another thing; I have heard it said, and I do not much
doubt it, that if the jet is fairly spouted into your eyes, it will
blind you. The wisest thing the investigator can do then, it seems to
me, is to let this deadly spout alone.

Still, we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish.
My hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides
other reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by considerations
touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale; I
account him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed
fact that he is never found on soundings, or near shores; all other
whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and profound. And I am
convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as
Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes
up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep
thoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity, I had the
curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere long saw reflected there,
a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my
head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep thought,
after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic, of an August noon;
this seems an additional argument for the above supposition.

And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster,
to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast,
mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his
incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor--as you will sometimes see
it--glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon
his thoughts. For, d'ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air;
they only irradiate vapor. And so, through all the thick mists of the
dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling
my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have
doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have
intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things
heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes
a man who regards them both with equal eye.

CHAPTER 86

The Tail

, To the student of old Roman walls, the middle layer will furnish
a curious parallel to the thin course of tiles always alternating with
the stone in those wonderful relics of the antique, and which
undoubtedly contribute so much to the great strength of the masonry.

Nor does this--its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple the
graceful flexion of its motions; where infantileness of ease undulates
through a Titanism of power. On the contrary, those motions derive their
most appalling beauty from it. Real strength never impairs beauty or
harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly
beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic. Take away the tied
tendons that all over seem bursting from the marble in the carved
Hercules, and its charm would be gone. As devout Eckerman lifted the
linen sheet from the naked corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the
massive chest of the man, that seemed as a Roman triumphal arch. When
Angelo paints even God the Father in human form, mark what robustness is
there. And whatever they may reveal of the divine love in the Son, the
soft, curled, hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in which his idea has
been most successfully embodied; these pictures, so destitute as they
are of all brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but the mere negative,
feminine one of submission and endurance, which on all hands it is
conceded, form the peculiar practical virtues of his teachings.

in maidenly gentleness Had this tail any prehensile power, I should
straightway bethink me of Darmonodes' elephant that so frequented
the flower-market, and with low salutations presented nosegays to
damsels, and then caressed their zones. On more accounts than one, a
pity it is that the whale does not possess this prehensile virtue in his
tail; for I have heard of yet another elephant, that when wounded in the
fight, curved round his trunk and extracted the dart.

So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his
tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell. But in gazing at
such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in the Dantean,
the devils will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the archangels.
African

so far as some aspects of the tail of the one and the trunk of the
other are concerned, opposite organs , much less the creatures to which
they respectively belong. (k)

The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my
inability to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which,
though they would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly
inexplicable. In an extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are
these mystic gestures, that I have heard hunters who have declared them
akin to Free-Mason signs and symbols; that the whale, indeed, by these
methods intelligently conversed with the world. Nor are there wanting
other motions of the whale in his general body, full of strangeness, and
unaccountable to his most experienced assailant. Dissect him how I may,
then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I know
not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how
comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back
parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I
cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about
his face, I say again he has no face.

CHAPTER 87

The Grand Armada

Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and
standing midway in that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold
green promontory, known to seamen as Java Head; they not a little
correspond to the central gateway opening into some vast walled empire:
and considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, and silks, and
jewels, and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand islands of that
oriental sea are enriched, it seems a significant provision of nature,
that such treasures, by the very formation of the land, should at least
bear the appearance, however ineffectual, of being guarded from the
all-grasping western world. The shores of the Straits of Sunda are
unsupplied with those domineering fortresses which guard the entrances
to the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes,
these Orientals do not demand the obsequious homage of lowered top-sails
from the endless procession of ships before the wind, which for
centuries past, by night and by day, have passed between the islands of
Sumatra and Java, freighted with the costliest cargoes of the east. But
while they freely waive a ceremonial like this, they do by no means
renounce their claim to more solid tribute.

. By these means, the circumnavigating Pequod would sweep almost
all the known Sperm Whale cruising grounds of the world, previous to
descending upon the Line in the Pacific; , though everywhere else foiled
in his pursuit,

For a long time, now, the circus-running sun has raced within his
fiery ring, and needs no sustenance but what's in himself. So Ahab.
Mark this, too, in the whaler. She has a whole lake's contents
bottled in her ample hold. She is ballasted with utilities; not
altogether with unusable pig-lead and kentledge.

So that did you carry them the news that another flood had come;
they would only answer--"Well, boys, here's the ark!"

Almost renouncing all thought of falling in with any game
hereabouts,

, sometimes embracing so great a multitude, that it would almost
seem as if numerous nations of them had sworn solemn league and covenant for mutual assistance and protection , , suddenly

Unlike the straight perpendicular twin-jets of the Right Whale,
which, dividing at top, fall over in two branches, like the cleft
drooping boughs of a willow, the single forward-slanting spout of the
Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush of white mist, continually
rising and falling away to leeward.

, descried of a balmy autumnal morning, by some horseman on a
height

, all eagerness to place that perilous passage in their rear, and
once more expand in comparative security upon the plain;

If the wind only held, little doubt had they, that chased through
these Straits of Sunda, the vast host would only deploy into the
Oriental seas to witness the capture of not a few of their number. And
who could tell whether, in that congregated caravan, Moby Dick himself
might not temporarily be swimming, like the worshipped white-elephant in
the coronation procession of the Siamese!

As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequod should
fairly have entered the straits, these rascally Asiatics were now in hot
pursuit, to make up for their over-cautious delay. But when the swift
Pequod, with a fresh leading wind, was herself in hot chase; how very
kind of these tawny philanthropists to assist in speeding her on to her
own chosen pursuit,--mere riding-whips and rowels to her, that they
were. As ; some such fancy as the above seemed his.

, by some presumed wonderful instinct of the Sperm Whale, -- -- so
that their spouts all looked like flashing lines of stacked bayonets,

(l) rapidly and steadily , Had these Leviathans been but a flock of
simple sheep, pursued over the pasture by three fierce wolves, they
could not possibly have evinced such excessive dismay. But this
occasional timidity is characteristic of almost all herding creatures.
Though banding together in tens of thousands, the lion-maned buffaloes
of the West have fled before a solitary horseman. Witness, too, all
human beings, how when herded together in the sheepfold of a theatres
pit, they will, at the slightest alarm of fire, rush helter-skelter for
the outlets, crowding, trampling, jamming, and remorselessly dashing
each other to death. Best, therefore, withhold any amazement at the
strangely gallied whales before us, for there is no folly of the beasts
of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.

, as has been said, it is to be observed that Though struck under
such circumstances, and indeed is almost always more or less
anticipated;

As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power
of speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him; as
we thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced as we flew,
by the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us; our beset boat was
like a ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest, and striving to steer
through their complicated channels and straits, knowing not at what
moment it may be locked in and crushed.

,

,

Nor were the oarsmen quite idle, though their wonted duty was now
altogether dispensed with. They chiefly attended to the shouting part of
the business. "Out of the way, Commodore!" cried one, to a
great dromedary that of a sudden rose bodily to the surface, and for an
instant threatened to swamp us. "Hard down with your tail,
there!" cried a second to another, which, close to our gunwale,
seemed calmly cooling himself with his own fan-like extremity. Now,
inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between the revolving outer
circles, and inclusive of the spaces between the various pods in any one
of those circles, the entire area at this juncture, embraced by the
whole multitude, must have contained at least two or three square miles.
At any rate--though indeed such a test at such a time might be
deceptive--spoutings might be discovered from our low boat that seemed
playing up almost from the rim of the horizon. I mention this
circumstance, because, as if the cows and calves had been purposely
locked up in this innermost fold; and as if the wide extent of the herd
had hitherto prevented them from learning the precise cause of its
stopping; or, possibly, being so young, unsophisticated, and every way
innocent and inexperienced; however it may have been, these smaller
whales--now and then visiting our becalmed boat from the margin of the
lake--evinced a wondrous fearlessness and confidence, or else a still
becharmed panic which it was impossible not to marvel at. round us, for
the time

--; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final spring, the
unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar's bow.

(m)

,

and an appalling spectacle enough, any way; , , flailing with his
flexible tail, and

Yes, the long calm was departing.

seizing the helm-- "--"

CHAPTER 88

Schools and Schoolmasters

The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of
Sperm Whales, and there was also then given the probable cause inducing
those vast aggregations.

Now, though such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, as
must have been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands are
occasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals each.
Such bands are known as schools. They generally are of two sorts; those
composed almost entirely of females, and those mustering none but young
vigorous males, or bulls, as they are familiarly designated.

In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably
see a male of full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any alarm,
evinces his gallantry by falling in the rear and covering the flight of
his ladies. In truth, this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming
about over the watery world, surroundingly accompanied by all the
solaces and endearments of the harem. The contrast between this Ottoman
and his concubines is striking; because, while he is always of the
largest leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full growth, are
not more than one-third of the bulk of an average-sized male. They are
comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to exceed half a dozen
yards round the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that upon the
whole they are hereditarily entitled to en bon point.

It is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in their
indolent ramblings. Like fashionables, they are for ever on the move in
leisurely search of variety. You meet them on the Line in time for the
full flower of the Equatorial feeding season, having just returned,
perhaps, from spending the summer in the Northern seas, and so cheating
summer of all unpleasant weariness and warmth. By the time they have
lounged up and down the promenade of the Equator awhile, they start for
the Oriental waters in anticipation of the cool season there, and so
evade the other excessive temperature of the year.

When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange
suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his
interesting family. Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan coming
that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies,
with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away!
High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be
permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss; though do what the
Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out of his bed;
for, alas! all fish bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often cause the
most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales,
who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love. They fence with
their long lower jaws, sometimes locking them together, and so striving
for the supremacy like elks that warringly interweave their antlers. Not
a few are captured having the deep scars of these encounters,--furrowed
heads, broken teeth, scolloped fins; and in some instances, wrenched and
dislocated mouths.

But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away
at the first rush of the harem's lord, then is it very diverting to
watch that lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again and
revels there awhile, still in tantalizing vicinity to young Lothario,
like pious Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand concubines.
Granting other whales to be in sight, the fishermen will seldom give
chase to one of these Grand Turks; for these Grand Turks are too lavish
of their strength, and hence their unctuousness is small. As for the
sons and the daughters they beget, why, those sons and daughters must
take care of themselves; at least, with only the maternal help. For like
certain other omnivorous roving lovers that might be named, my Lord
Whale has no taste for the nursery, however much for the bower; and so,
being a great traveller, he leaves his anonymous babies all over the
world; every baby an exotic. In good time, nevertheless, as the ardor of
youth declines; as years and dumps increase; as reflection lends her
solemn pauses; in short, as a general lassitude overtakes the sated
Turk; then a love of ease and virtue supplants the love for maidens; our
Ottoman enters upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory stage of life,
forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary, sulky old
soul, goes about all alone among the meridians and parallels saying his
prayers, and warning each young Leviathan from his amorous errors.

Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school, so
is the lord and master of that school technically known as the
schoolmaster. It is therefore not in strict character, however admirably
satirical, that after going to school himself, he should then go abroad
inculcating not what he learned there, but the folly of it. His title,
schoolmaster, would very naturally seem derived from the name bestowed
upon the harem itself, but some have surmised that the man who first
thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale, must have read the memoirs of
Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a country- schoolmaster that
famous Frenchman was in his younger days, and what was the nature of
those occult lessons he inculcated into some of his pupils.

The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale
betakes himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged Sperm
Whales. Almost universally, a lone whale--as a solitary Leviathan is
called--proves an ancient one. Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone,
he will have no one near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to
wife in the wilderness of waters, and the best of wives she is, though
she keeps so many moody secrets.

The schools composing none but young and vigorous males, previously
mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools. For while those
female whales are characteristically timid, the young males, or
forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most pugnacious of
all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to encounter;
excepting those wondrous greyheaded, grizzled whales, sometimes met, and
these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by a penal gout.

The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools.
Like a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and
wickedness, tumbling round the world at such a reckless, rollicking
rate, that no prudent underwriter would insure them any more than he
would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this
turbulence though, and when about three-fourths grown, break up, and
separately go about in quest of settlements, that is, harems.

Another point of difference between the male and female schools is
still more characteristic of the sexes. Say you strike a
Forty-barrel-bull--poor devil! all his comrades quit him. But strike a
member of the harem school, and her companions swim around her with
every token of concern, sometimes lingering so near her and so long, as
themselves to fall a prey.

CHAPTER 89

Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish

in the last chapter but one,

,--a mast, an oar, a nine-inch cable, a telegraph wire, or a strand
of cobweb, it is all the same

--the Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist

Now in the present case Erskine contended that the examples of the
whale and the lady were reciprocally illustrative of each other.

(the fish)

,

poor

COPYRIGHT 2009 Review of Contemporary Fiction
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.